Are the Taliban really in charge?

Photo by nasim dadfar on Unsplash

Tomorrow is the first day the Taliban will be in sole charge of Afghanistan.

But are they really in charge?

Where’s the government? It’s been a fortnight since Kabul fell to the Taliban but we’re yet to hear who will head Afghanistan’s administration, who will be the finance minister, the foreign minister etc etc. Apparently, the Taliban said they would not announce a government until all foreigners had left, which is rather an extraordinary promise. Sounds a bit childish, right? Shades of “I’ll sing when you’re not looking”!

How will the country manage its finances? Until the Taliban’s reconquest, foreign aid accounted for 75 per cent of the Afghan government’s budget and some 40 per cent of GDP. That’s on hold, for now and the US has also frozen more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank assets.

Chatham House had a very good paper on the implications of the financial squeeze. First and foremost, it will drive up inflation, including food prices. Second,…